Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

When a web designer goes about developing a new website, he or she usually focuses on two aspects: functionality and appearance. Since text usually isn’t very appealing, images are often used to make a website more pleasing to the eyes. However, the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.” does not apply to search engines. A search engine only understands text. Therefore, the question becomes, how can I create a fully optimized site, but still use images?

The first thing that you can do is make sure that everything that can be expressed in text is expressed in text. Often times, images actually contain text. One popular example of this is the use of navigation links on a website. Text could easily be used instead of images. This may raise the question: Why would I want to use more text if you just said that is was less appealing? Well, there are ways to make text seem like images. A perfect example is that of Ameritrade. The green links across the top of the page appear to be images, but are actually text contained within a background image, thus helping to optimize the homepage.

Another idea for optimizing you website is using alt and title elements whenever you use the img tag. Taking advantage of the alt element allows you to optimize your images for search engines. Essentially, what you are doing is telling the search engine what the image is, through the use of text. alt text is intended to be used instead of an image, not to provide additional information. To be used effectively, it should be limited to 3 keywords at most. The title element also allows you to assign text to an image. However, the text assigned should provide supplemental information, not explain what the image is. The title element allows users to bring their mouse over an image and get extended information about an image that may not be shown.

Image without alt and title elements

<img src=”dog.jpg” width=”200″ height=”150″>

Image with alt and title elements

<img src=”dog.jpg” width=”200″ height=”150″ alt=”Dog Jumping” title=”This friendly Labrador is great with kids.”>